Huayu 05, our science fiction movie universe

Chapter 650 The First Year of Tianlin
The release of "The Martian" swept across China during the Spring Festival like a hurricane.

Almost everyone is talking about this movie, both online and offline.

As a result, the viewership of previous works from the [Galaxy Cinematic Universe] on Starry Sky Video Network has increased significantly, and the movie channel has also begun rebroadcasting movies such as "Gravity", "Wolf Warrior 1", and "Detective Chinatown 1".

Meanwhile, thanks to the film's popularity, the number of daily visitors to Galaxy Park also saw a significant increase during the Spring Festival holiday.

The park's employees have been incredibly busy during this holiday; their performance bonuses from just these few days are equivalent to at least one or two months' salary.

Movie-related toys are also selling well on several major platforms.

The stocks of Galaxy Pictures and its subsidiaries saw a surge.

It can be said that "The Martian" has driven the rapid development of the entire industry chain, which fully proves the value of Wang Hao's works.

In contrast, the other movies released in the same period experienced what it means to live in the cracks.

"The New King of Comedy" and "The Knight of Shadows: Between Yin and Yang" were so bad that they were bombarded with countless electronic "rotten tomatoes" and "rotten eggs" by netizens.

As for animated films, they weren't brought up either.

Therefore, the main comparison is still focused on "Pegasus" and "Crazy Alien".

Although the former's box office performance was mediocre, the general public's evaluation of the film was not too bad. On the contrary, many people said that Han Han's directing skills had improved compared to his previous film, that he was more mature in his storytelling ability, and that the combination of comedy and racing content was just right.

In contrast, his negative example is Ning Hao.

Audiences and film critics have little to say about this middle-generation director who rose to prominence around the same time as Wang Hao.

Perhaps, by today's standards, the throne of the King of Comedy is inevitably about to change hands.

[The Sino-US co-productions you've been talking about, where both arts and sports flourish, are finally happening!]

Ning Hao, Huang Bo, Shen Teng, and Xu Zheng are all top-tier comedians in China, but this film is absolutely hilarious! (You can't laugh out loud!)

[This is even worse than "Breakup Buddies," solidifying Ning Hao's reputation as his worst film ever, and his legendary reputation is now in jeopardy.]

[A complete farce, devoid of Ning Hao's style, and the script is utterly terrible. A collection of stale jokes and pointless laughs.]

While Wang Hao, who debuted around the same time, continued to improve and made films like "The Martian," Ning Hao released "Crazy Alien," which also claimed to be a science fiction film.

Sometimes you have to admit your shortcomings and how outdated you are. There's no shame in that, after all, times are changing.

Similar criticisms of "Crazy Alien" and Ning Hao are not uncommon on the internet.

Fortunately, another major event on the internet during this Spring Festival helped alleviate a lot of the pressure on Ning Hao.

In February 2019, during a live stream, well-known young actor Zhai Tianlin, when asked by netizens, asked, "What is CNKI?" followed by a confused expression.

This has caused a huge mess, and netizens immediately went into an uproar.

As a PhD from Beijing Film Academy and a postdoctoral fellow at Peking University, how could he not know about academic search platforms?
The reaction to this incident was almost identical to that of the "4+4" incident and the case of falsely accusing Ms. Yang six years later; resourceful netizens immediately began to dig deeper.

They found Zhai Tianlin's publicly available doctoral dissertation, "On the Performance Creation of 'Bai Xiaowen' in the TV Series 'White Deer Plain'", which had a plagiarism rate of up to 40% on CNKI. It contained large sections of plagiarized from Chen Kun's undergraduate thesis and a 2006 article by a professor from Huangshan University, and the journal did not meet the requirements for postdoctoral fellowships at Peking University.

In addition, his academic background is also full of doubts. Some netizens discovered that Zhai Tianlin obtained a doctoral degree from Beijing Film Academy in June 2018 and was recruited as a postdoctoral fellow by Peking University's Guanghua School of Management in December of the same year.

However, Peking University's postdoctoral application requires "at least two papers published in core journals," while Zhai Tianlin only had one, and the paper was also suspected of plagiarism.

Meanwhile, the Beijing Film Academy stipulates that doctoral students must publish academic papers independently, but Zhai Tianlin's mentor, Chen Yi (then the vice dean of the Beijing Film Academy's School of Performing Arts), only had a bachelor's degree and did not meet the qualifications for a doctoral supervisor.

The incident escalated rapidly online, and during the 2019 Spring Festival, its popularity even surpassed that of the movie "The Martian," which was still in theaters.

Regarding Weibo's trending topics alone, the topic of Zhai Tianlin, starting with "not knowing CNKI," has been a constant throughout.

#Zhai Tian's Academic Misconduct Case at Sichuan University#
#Zhai Tianlin's 19 cohorts of thesis#
The related topic has appeared on Weibo's trending topics list several times, with a total readership of over 100 million.

Some netizens have also meticulously compiled Zhai Tianlin's announcements over the years and posted a timeline of his work schedule during his doctoral studies.

According to the compiled statistical table, Zhai Tianlin began his doctoral studies in film studies at the Beijing Film Academy in July 2014, and has continued until his graduation with his doctorate.

During his four years of doctoral studies, Zhai Tianlin starred in 11 dramas, participated in 7 dramas, did 24 endorsements, and recorded 17 variety shows.

For the past four years, he's been constantly taking on acting roles and commercials, so how could he possibly have time for academic research?
A series of public opinions fermented, almost causing Zhai Tianlin's "academic genius" persona, which he had frequently marketed in the entertainment industry, to collapse.

And it's not over yet.

Perhaps because Zhai Tianlin didn't really have any powerful backers, the official response to this matter was much faster than the response to two similar incidents six years later.

Almost immediately after the incident broke out, less than a few days later, on February 10, the Beijing Film Academy, after conducting an investigation, immediately issued an announcement stating that it had confirmed that Zhai Tianlin's thesis contained plagiarism and academic misconduct, and revoked his doctoral degree.

Meanwhile, his mentor Chen Yi was also stripped of his doctoral supervisor qualification, and Zhang Hui, the dean of the performing arts academy, was investigated.

Six days later, Peking University's Guanghua School of Management announced the termination of Dr. Zhai Tianlin's postdoctoral appointment, admitting that the vetting process was not rigorous enough.

Eleven days later, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Education stated that it would comprehensively rectify academic misconduct in universities and promote reforms to systems such as thesis plagiarism detection and supervisor qualification review.

The entire process was swift, decisive, and efficient, fully demonstrating just how important gender and background are in such matters.

If Zhai Tianlin were Zhai Tianlin, the situation might be different.

Unfortunately, this guy was a man, so he became a chicken used to scare monkeys.

Immediately after his incident came to light, the thesis review mechanism of universities began to be tightened across the board, and the plagiarism rate of master's and doctoral theses was generally reduced from 30% to 10%-15%, with some universities even requiring it to be below 5%.

With CNKI plagiarism checking becoming a mandatory graduation standard, students complained about the "skyrocketing plagiarism check fees" and called this year "the first year of the Tianlin era," a year that would sadden future students and be complained about almost every graduation season.

It can be said that Zhai Tianlin's statement had an unparalleled impact during the Spring Festival of 2019, triggering a "major earthquake" in the academic community and revealing some deeper problems in the development of the entire higher education system to this day.

Of course, he also ruined his career with this one sentence, causing his career to completely collapse. All his film and television works were boycotted, and his scenes in works such as "The Old Chinese Doctor" and "The Abyss Walker" were cut. In addition, Zhai Tianlin's incident also affected Wang Hao to some extent.

Wang Hao is also a highly educated member of the entertainment industry, although he didn't flaunt his academic achievements like Zhai Tianlin.

However, while digging into Zhai Tianlin's thesis, netizens also unearthed Wang Hao's master's and doctoral dissertations.

Fortunately, his master's thesis and doctoral dissertation were based on his own work experience.

An article titled "A Study on the Path of Building China's Film Industrialization System - An Empirical Analysis Based on the Optimization of Production Management Processes" incorporates his case studies from the production of domestic films such as "Gravity", "Inception", and "Wolf Warrior".

An article titled "A Study on the Overseas Strategies of Chinese Films under the New Era of Media" combines the overseas expansion of the Douyin short video platform and the Galaxy Cinematic Universe series to explore how Chinese films can reach the world.

Both articles are well-reasoned, supported by detailed and reliable data, and combine viewpoints with reality, while also possessing a certain degree of foresight and practicality.

Therefore, amidst this news hotspot, Wang Hao actually became a positive example.

This also sparked online discussions about "The Martian".

They believe that it is precisely because Wang Hao was able to write such master's and doctoral theses that he was able to make such a classic science fiction film.

This leads to the argument that "cultural workers must be cultured."

Sometimes, the world is just a giant makeshift stage. You don't need to do anything too good; just do things normally, and your idiotic competitors will naturally highlight your excellence.

Of course, Wang Hao didn't care much about this matter, because he already knew that this kind of thing would happen.

Moreover, even if Zhai Tianlin hadn't been "unaware of CNKI" this year, there would have been Zhao Buzhi and Zhang Buzhi.

In fact, in recent years, the phenomenon of "low culture" in the entertainment industry has become almost blatant.

Some celebrities often cause controversy due to a lack of cultural literacy.

For example, a top celebrity mispronounced "纨绔子弟" (wan ku zi di, meaning spoiled brat) as "执夸子弟" (zhi ku zi di, meaning to boast or exaggerate) and "沮丧" (sàng jǔ, meaning frustrated or depressed) as "且丧" (qiě sàng, meaning to suffer or lose); in a talent show, a contestant did not know the year of the Anti-Japanese War and claimed that "Lu Xun was Korean".

Furthermore, in many interviews, when asked about their understanding of the characters, some actors also expressed themselves illogically, gave irrelevant answers, and showed no thought whatsoever.

This phenomenon reflects multiple reasons, including a flawed industry ecosystem, inefficient capital logic, and a lack of proper education.

The root cause of the low cultural level in China is, on the one hand, the low entry barriers in the industry, with the cultural course score requirements for art colleges being lower than those for ordinary majors.

Meanwhile, in the internet age, traffic is paramount, and capital prefers young amateurs and talent shows that generate high buzz and are easy to manage.

On the other hand, the lack of education caused by early professionalization has also left some young artists behind in terms of knowledge.

Furthermore, the fan economy fosters ignorance, and the industry's superficiality leads to a rush to monetize, squeezing out time for learning and improvement...

Due to various factors, the cultural level of celebrities in the entertainment industry is almost universally labeled as "lacking in education."

This low cultural level within the industry has led to a decline in the quality of film and television works, a distortion of the values ​​of young people, and a lack of cultural output.

Actors can't understand the script, so screenwriters, in order to cater to the cultural level of the artists, are forced to "lower their intelligence" and make complex characters flat.

The idea that studying is useless is prevalent, with teenagers believing that "becoming an internet celebrity/star is more lucrative than going to university."

Domestically produced films are of poor quality and have no competitiveness overseas.

There are countless similar cases.

Fortunately, the development of Xinghe Group in recent years has brought about some changes.

Firstly, Galaxy Group has vigorously developed a film industrialization system. While building a complete industry chain, it has naturally attracted many science and technology talents to enter the film industry.

Among these talents, Xinghe Group has promoted quite a few.

Many of their company's assistant directors, executive directors, producers, prop masters, special effects artists, and even directors are not from art schools; they come from science-related majors at various universities.

In addition, in terms of artist training, Xinghe Group's "Spark Program," a collaboration with art colleges, has introduced many high-quality artists into the entertainment industry over the years.

During the "Spark Program" training, Wang Hao specifically pointed out that academic subjects should not be neglected either.

If an actor is uneducated, unable to understand the script or analyze the character's psychological state, how can one expect his performance to be accurate and vivid?

Of course, effort often has a time lag.

Although Xinghe Group has developed to the point of being a leading domestic company and a well-known global company, it has only been officially established for less than 10 years. Its influence and voice in the industry are also a recent development.

Therefore, the things that Xinghe Group is currently working on will take several more years to bear fruit.

Those emerging directors and artists influenced by Xinghe Group will inevitably become the backbone of China's film and television culture industry in the future, eliminating some backward and conservative forces in the industry.

Wang Hao is extremely confident about this.

So during the promotional tour for "The Martian," when reporters asked Wang Hao about his lack of knowledge of CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), he frankly shared his thoughts, which shocked many media outlets.

However, his remarks, once posted online, garnered considerable approval and support from netizens.

[Chinese cinema is counting on you, Director Wang!]

This is the sentence with the most likes among netizens' comments. At the same time, the ever-increasing box office of "The Martian" undoubtedly proves that the support of netizens and the public for Wang Hao and good movies and works is never just empty talk.

Therefore, during the seven-day Spring Festival holiday, the total box office of "The Martian" directly exceeded 20 billion yuan.

While this achievement doesn't quite match Wang Hao's previous work, "The Three-Body Problem 1," it's still among the top in the Star River Cinematic Universe series.

(End of this chapter)